A light of hope has been blown away

Date: 27th Dec., 2007

Today is undoubtedly, one of the saddest days in the history of the world. A day, when a bright beacon of hope called “Benazir Bhutto”, has been extinguished forever.

It is said that Benazir wrote about her entry into politics, in her autobiography as- “ I did not choose this. Rather, this chose me” . Today, after being regarded as a hope for a safer and saner future to millions of Pakistanis, hope for a more stable South-East Asia, and above all, hope for peace in today’s war-driven world, she lies bullet-ridden, sharing the fate of so many of the best thinkers, politicians and statesmen that the world has seen in the last 50 years.

The single-most attribute for which she will be remembered is definitely her courage. Raw courage that made her return to her country when many others, more experienced than her, shuddered to set foot in the living hell that Pakistan has become today.

There are not many men, leave alone women, who have the mental strength to make a heroic, historic speech, holding back tears, and vowing to root out terror and dictorship just 24 hrs after seeing ones’s closest aides being blasted to pieces, knowing well that the scattered limbs on the blood-soaked street could have easily been theirs. Benazir was one such exceptional lady.

A brave woman, who went through a lot of personal and public tragedy but who never failed to channelize the pain and loss into a force to reckon with, when it comes to the anti-terror war or the pro-democracy rebellion in Pakistan.

A role model for not just the millions of relegated Muslim women across the world, but also a leading light for each and every conscientious citizen of the world to fight against what one believes to be wrong.

A braveheart who came out of exile because her love for her homeland and concern for its future, far outweighed her fear of assassins. Benazir was the rightful heir of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and a commendable bearer of the Bhutto legacy. Indeed, an era has gone with the death of the Daughter of the East.

I feel like Forrest Gump sometimes…….

…when I stop at a traffic-signal sometimes and I see those malnourished girls aged 3-12, begging, being shooed by every motorist. And badly wanting to improve their plight, but all I do is thrust in their hands, the toffee that I find in my pocket.

… when I go to the meeting after lunch, having relished chicken kababs, a nice, juicy sliver of which, is stuck between my buck teeth and I wonder why everyone’s got a ‘I’m –gonna-get sick-any-moment’ look on their face once I start talking.

… when I saw my one-time best friend get in the front of the mike at the elocution competition, holding my speech in hand, when in fact I was the one chosen by a forum of teachers and students to represent my class.

… when people just refuse to see the wise, matured-beyond-the-years me that is held captive in a body of a teenager.

… when I’m lying sick in the hospital, not knowing whether I will survive the next 48 hrs and I hear that a healthy, young person ended her life because she was wasn’t well-prepared for her 12th Std. exams.

… when I look at someone who’s made it to the IAS and wonder if I threw away my true calling by chucking my IAS dream at 21—a dream that I had nourished since the age of 7.

… when I look back at my school-days, when so many girls treated me as more than a confidante and wonder why I never considered them as best friend material, and why on earth I had that blinkered attitude when it came to friendships.

…. When I look at my school and college mates now, all happy, some settled in their dream jobs, some married and some even with twin babies, if I ever have it in my destiny to enjoy the same.

Yes, there will be many more times when I will feel just like Gump. I hope that the little good that I have ever done in my life, knowingly or unknowingly, will pay off in the end, just as it did for Gump-myHero.

Dreams--The kind that you get when you are in Zzzzz-Zzzzzz लैंड.

I've had times when I've almost been scared to sleep at night for fear of getting nightmares। And there've been times when I couldn't wait to get to bed. Needless to say, my dreams have always reflected my fears, hopes and most of all my moods.

In school, whenever I used to read Enid Blyton's books, I used to get these dreams that I call " the bollywood masala" type dreams--full of energy, heroism and excitement, where you are either trying to escape from something or are trying to get hold of something and you finally do succeed. The really strange thing about them is that whenever I get caught by the villains in the end, (I know this sounds crazy) I sort of rewind my dream and direct it to end in the way I want. I've enjoyed these kinds of dreams so much that I wake up with the feeling of having conquered the world. At times, I've even gone as far as cursing mankind's advancement in technology for not yet having developed a machine that could capture our dreams in technicolour so that we can see them afresh the next day with our eyes open. Come to think of it, if such a machine comes out in the market, it would win the gadget of the decade award, hands down. It would be the x-ray machine of the subconscious. Employers would use it to weed out people with criminal intentions and hire only the most ambitious and pleasant people. The first people to buy them would of course be shrinks. They would put their victims to sleep and then watch what is going on in their inner world. But I of course would buy the gadget to make blockbuster movies out of my technicolour dreams.

I've had my share of the odd, weird dreams as well. The one that I particularly remember is the one in which my surgeon( one of the most reputed surgeons, mind you) was dressed up in a bright blue-floral Hawaiian holiday t-shirt with shocking pink shorts. He was doing a weird jig, with a cocktail in one hand, with the other hand on his hip and trying to swirl around like a ballet dancer. Unfortunately I woke up before I had the chance to see him fall on his face. I've never been able to figure out what exactly was going on in my subconscious mind that night.

Someday, when there is hopefully the x-ray dream machine around, I will keep a record of these dreams, and become another Farah Khan!